You will be sacked if students fail BECE, WASSCE – Education Minister warns school heads

Education Minister Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has warned that basic and second cycle school heads who record 90 percent or more failure in their final exams will be sacked.

He says the persistent poor performance of the students in the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) is unacceptable demanding that the school heads justify their continued stay in their positions.

Addressing heads of senior high schools (SHS) in Kumasi as part of a two-day familiarization tour to the Ashanti Region he emphasised that the Ministry would not continue to accommodate school heads who superintend over consistent poor performance.

Dr Prempeh noted that in public schools, the heads have justified their continued stay in office over the performance of the students when the same cannot be said for the private schools whose continued operation is dependent on the performance of their students in the WASSCE.

“Any school head who superintends over a failure of over 90% cannot be allowed to continue operation without accounting to the Ghana Education Service (GES).

Last September, the Director of General of the GES, Jacob A. Kor, lauded the exceptional improvement in the total scores of candidates for the 2016 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results after it was released.

The West African Examination Council statistics indicated that a total score of 600 being the maximum raw score in six subjects, 3,994 candidates got more than 500, which according to Mr Kor has never happened before in the history of BECE in Ghana.

However, the WASSCE results were nothing to write home about as the then presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo criticising the Mahama administration after more than half of candidates who wrote the exam failed.

The results showed that the students who sat for the 2016 exams failed in the core subjects of Maths, English, Science and Social Studies.

About 32 percent of the students obtained the pass grade of A to C6 in the core subjects and 19.82 percent of students obtained D7-E8 which most tertiary institutions consider as a fail score. About 38.10 percent of students had F9.

Candidate Akufo-Addo said the development has made him sad adding the only way to put the country on the path of development is by changing president John Mahama.

The minister working to prosecute the change agenda of the President said those who fail out of the system end up as social deviants who come back to haunt society.

Dr Opoku Prempeh said the Service would give the schools all the support and help they need but they would demand accountability once the results come.

“We would also distribute DVD’s on students preparation for the WASSCE,” adding “it is our hope that with the provision of support and management orientation that you are going to receive, heads and teacher will be able to guide their students to improve their performance in WASSCE 2017.”

He disclosed that the GES has already been directed to start a school management discussion to commence the introduction of courses for those who are going into management.